Madman’s Bend Read online

  “Why impatient with you, Inspector Bonaparte?” asked Mrs Cosgrove.

  “They will be saying that that feller Bonaparte is lolling around Mira and looking at the stars and things instead of reporting back and getting on with this or that investigation which has baffled their best men. They will be howling at my heels because I haven’t apprehended William Lush and am not on my way back to headquarters.”

  “Do you hope to locate him now that the river’s down in flood?” asked Mrs Cosgrove, and Bony felt rather than saw Jill Madden raise her head as though the better to hear his reply.

  “I permit myself to hope he is still alive, and that I shall apprehend him. If he is not alive, then I shall continue to hope I shall eventually apprehend the person who killed him.”

  “But, alive or dead, he’s on the far side of the river, and you won’t get across now for perhaps several weeks,” argued young Cosgrove.

  “Then the river will fall and I shall cross in one of the boats.” Bony airily waved a hand. “Time! What is time? Tomorrow, next week, next month, even next year will not worry me as it will worry my superiors. I’ve been sacked a dozen times for closing my mind to an order to return, and always I’ve been reinstated. However, be sure I can use a shovel in a crisis.”

  “Well, time is going to worry us, Inspector,” declared Mrs Cosgrove. “We shall all be very busy, but you must not hesitate to ask your questions, nor to ask for any assistance we can render. The sooner you find Lush, or find out what happened to him, the better for poor Jill. And for us, too. We have a very personal interest, Inspector. Jill’s father and mother were very sound people. Not as affluent as we, but of our standard of behaviour.”

  Bony thought that could mean much or little. The use of the word affluent indicated an incomplete acceptance of the Maddens. This woman had set her values when her husband controlled a million acres, and she would doubtless still have those values in her present circumstances. Intuition, rather than anything she said or implied, told Bony that her reaction to him was due to Superintendent Macey.

  The Scots manager-accountant stoically regarded the cheese dish, and a moment later Mrs Cosgrove rose saying that she and Jill would retire to the drawing-room. Bony opened the door, and Mrs Cosgrove tilted her face fractionally as she passed from the room. Meanwhile Mr MacCurdle had brought the port and the glasses from the sideboard.

  “My mother is a stickler for the rules,” young Cosgrove said, proving that he was perceptive, as Bony had indeed been slightly surprised. “My dad once told me that my maternal grandfather had been a dean at York Minster, and although he argued that Mira sheep station wasn’t York Minster, and he wasn’t a dean, anyway, he’d come to agree that the rules were good, especially the rule about the ladies leaving the gents to drink in peace. Here’s to the ladies, both of them.”

  “And here’s to Inspector Bonaparte,” said MacCurdle, swiftly refilling his glass, and then producing a cigar. “We shall hope that your stay here, Inspector, will be to your likin’.”

  “I am sure it will, Mac, if only you and Ray will drop the rank and call me Bony, as my wife and children always do, and my chief does when in a rage with me.”

  Cosgrove grinned at the Scotsman.

  “We could be breaking a rule, Mac.”

  “We could so, Ray.”

  Both men looked at Bony, who said, “Split the difference. When at the table, and when I am hounding you with questions, I am Inspector, and when I am otherwise off duty, I am Bony.”

  “Agreed,” Cosgrove said, and MacCurdle nodded.

  “Consider a wager?” Bony persisted, and they nodded. “I bet you both a shilling that Mrs Cosgrove will be calling me Bony at table within a week from tonight.”

  MacCurdle frowned, making Bony think that a shilling was too much to risk. He recognized his mistake when the manager said, “You’re a new experience, Bony. I’ve only been in Australia twenty years, but you are a new experience. What’s he to you, Ray?”

  “Can’t work it out, Mac. There were two chaps at school from Singapore, and I reckon Bony has something we haven’t. Look! Time’s up. Coffee!”

  The description of the Maddens as sound people was, to Bony’s mind, applicable also to these two men. However, never trusting first impressions, he put the thought from him as he was served with coffee by Jill Madden. His first impression of the girl and Mrs Cosgrove was wearing fairly well. Environmental changes typed the older woman, for, superimposed on the ecclesiastical education and the influence of cathedral society, was the influence exerted over many years by the broader way of life in the Australian outback. Mrs Cosgrove had been sufficiently intelligent to accept much of Australia while retaining much of England, recognizing that both countries could contribute to the fashioning of this emerging Australian nation.

  Many people would hold that to come from England into this back country would mean a severing of cultural ties; but such people would fail to see that the land itself is richly rewarding, and that the wife of a man owning eighty thousand sheep, a fine house, and an estate of one million acres would have a wonderful outlet for attributes that would doubtless be severely limited by a cathedral close. This, Bony considered, explained Mrs Cosgrove’s decision to cling to Mira, reduced as it had been, after her husband’s death. He knew he would have to tread softly to win the bets he had made with her son and the manager.

  As for Jill Madden, she had surprised him when he met her at dinner. She was in evening dress. Her hair was done becomingly, and a little make-up banished the effect of the outdoors. Finding himself now and then being examined by her, he decided she was far more sophisticated than he had supposed and that he would have to deal with her more subtly than hitherto, especially since she would certainly be advised by Ray Cosgrove. Her speech proved the influence exerted by a public school, an expensive item in her father’s budget.

  The ‘polite conversation’ was terminated by Mrs Cosgrove’s asking the girl to play something, and Bony was astonished when she sat at the baby grand and began Liszt’s Liebestraume No 3. To Cosgrove he whispered, “She plays wonderfully. I didn’t see a piano in her home.”

  “The bastard smashed it last April,” said Cosgrove, and pointedly returned to enjoyment of the music.

  The information spoiled Bony’s appreciation, and for the remainder of the short session the music was background noise to him. Here was motive enough to kill William Lush, without the addition of the threat of bodily injury. The piano might well have been the last joy in the lives of this girl and her mother. If it may be said that any man was born to be murdered, surely that man was Lush.

  Presently Jill Madden left the piano, and excused herself by saying that she was out of mood this evening.

  “Of course, Jill, we understand.” Mrs Cosgrove spoke for all of them. “But you play beautifully. Your touch is like a butterfly: mine is as heavy as a cart-horse. I think we will put Inspector Bonaparte under the bright light, or whatever it is they do with persons they want to question. He says he will be asking us many questions, and I think we should first test him with some of ours. He hasn’t said anything of what he has found out: even what he thinks happened to Lush, if anything.” “Mother, you are brilliant tonight,” said her son, smiling at Bony. “Inspector, you’re on the mat and the light’s in your eyes.”

  “Well, fire your questions. I may or may not prevaricate at this beginning of an inquisition.”

  “Then tell us, Inspector, what you think happened to Lush,” Mrs Cosgrove persisted.

  “I think he vanished.”

  “Of course he has vanished,” agreed Mrs Cosgrove, a trifle sharply. “D’you think he fell over into the water-hole, or just ran off to drink himself into a coma?”

  “On what I’ve heard about him, I hope he fell over the cliff and was drowned.”

  “Hoping isn’t thinking,” Raymond argued. “Turn the light on more.”

  “Mercy!” moaned Bony. “No more light. I give up, sarge. I’ll confess. I thin
k it probable that he fell into the water-hole. Whether accidentally or whether he was pushed I am unable to say.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The Swagmen’s Retreat

  AT SIX O’CLOCK on a July morning the day has barely opened its eyes, and it is a long wait until breakfast at seven. Arrayed in a bright-blue dressing gown, with slippers to match, Bony braved the cold air of the verandas, as well as Mrs Cosgrove’s disapproval, by prospecting for the kitchen, which he found to be detached from the house. The open door and the aroma of coffee gladdened his heart. He called, “May I come in?”

  “What d’you want?” asked a woman. Stepping inside, Bony saw her seated at a bench, a small, shrivelled woman with her grey hair bunched into a bun.

  “I would much like to share your teapot,” replied Bony, and waited hopefully for the invitation. As with everything else at Mira, it was a very large kitchen, and in it the small woman seemed like a large doll.

  “You are the new guest,” she said as a statement of fact. Then, graciously: “Yes, I suppose you can. Plenty in it. Help yourself.” Bony helped himself. He would have liked to warm his back at the rapidly heating range, but was aware that nothing raises a bush cook’s ire more than a man standing before his range or camp fire. She said, “There’s biscuits in the tin.”

  “Thanks. What’s your name?”

  “Mrs Tanglow. You Inspector Bonaparte?”

  “Yes, Mrs Tanglow. It’s going to be another fine day, isn’t it?”

  “My worries if it’s fine or wet.” Her brown eyes were screwed to pin-points. “That right you’re lookin’ for Bill Lush?”

  “Well, I have been. He seems to have disappeared.”

  “Hope he stays disappeared. I hope some more he’d walk into my kitchen asking for a cup of tea.”

  “Oh, you’d like to see him again?”

  “I’ll tell you what is no secret,” Mrs Tanglow said. “My hubby is about twice of you. When we’d been married a week he twisted my arm, and another time he smacked my face. Up to then I was always a lady, you understand. Yes, twice you and a bit. I kicked him in the stomach, and when he was bent over I hit him on the head with the wood back of a dust-pan brush. It didn’t hurt him as much as my boot in his stomach, so I hit him twice more to make a proper song and dance of him.”

  Mrs Tanglow paused for comment, and Bony was confident he could have picked her off the floor with one hand. He looked his interest, and she said, “J’you know what, Inspector? My hubby ate out of my hand from that day to this. Only way to fix a bully. Had Mrs Madden returned bash for bash she’d of been alive today.”

  “You could be right, Mrs Tanglow.”

  “Right! ’Course I’m right. Now you get out of my kitchen. I gotta earn my wages, not being a policeman. And don’t bother to wash your cup and saucer. The help’ll do that.”

  “Thank you, anyway,” said Bony. “When I find Mr Lush I’ll bring him here for a cup of tea.”

  “Do that, and turn your back so’s I can put a pinch or two of strychnine in it.”

  After this pleasant beginning of the new day Bony showered and dressed, smoked another cigarette, and waited for the breakfast gong. He found young Cosgrove and MacCurdle talking on the veranda overlooking the garden gate, beyond which were the office and store, and the outbuildings. They greeted him as Bony, and led the way to a small room opposite the kitchen where, he was informed, the men always breakfasted.

  “Seen the river?” asked the manager-accountant. “No? A wee bit early, eh? Well, she’s half-way to the top.”

  “She’ll rise slower from now on, Mac,” Cosgrove predicted. “The higher she gets the slower she’ll come, but she’ll come high before falling. We’re going to inspect the levee. Care to come along?”

  “I’d like to, but I have some telephoning to do and,” Bony smiled, “questions to ask. Where is the telephone?”

  “In the office. I’ll introduce you to the office.”

  Eventually Bony was shown where the keys were kept, and then shown the switchboard. For a while he stood on the office veranda, feeling the warmth of the sun, and watching the two men departing in a utility. He waited until eight before ringing through to Constable Lucas.

  “You remember the statement from the mail driver?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Did he mention meeting and stopping to warn two men about the flood?”

  “No, his statement concerns the utility, time he arrived at the boxes, and meeting young Cosgrove.”

  “Then when he is again in your town, please get from him a second statement to include who and what vehicles, if any, he met with on the morning that Lush disappeared.”

  “I’ll do that,” Lucas promised. “How high is the river?”

  “Half-way up the banks, I’m told. I haven’t seen it this morning. Saw it beginning to flow yesterday. It was an hour early, and I was nearly caught on the Madden side. In Madman’s Bend I encountered two characters: one called Dead March Harry, and the other was his mate. Didn’t get this second man’s name. Know anything of them?”

  Lucas chuckled. “Oh yes! Given no trouble, though. Dead March Harry and Mick the Warder have been on tramp together for years. They work sometimes, but not long at any job. Harry is harmless, and Mick looks after him. Their beat is from Bourke down to Wentworth. I don’t know what truth there’s in it, but I was told that the small feller was a warder in the Victoria Department. Difficult to believe it, a warder coming down to being a swagman.”

  “Well, they were the pair who told me the mail driver told them about the flood. They said they didn’t know the flood was so near. It occurred to me that the driver could have met other swagmen, or travellers, that morning Lush disappeared. We think that young Cosgrove was the first to find the abandoned ute. Someone else could have been there before him.”

  “I’ll check. What next?”

  “That’s all. The routine alert for Lush would have gone out to all police stations when the warrant of arrest was issued, but we could take the additional step of alerting every homestead within a radius of a hundred miles. Will you see to it?”

  “Of course. You believe he cleared right away?”

  “No, I don’t believe so, but I’ve no proof that he didn’t.”

  Bony rang off and after delay contacted Superintendent Macey.

  “Morning, Super. You located Lush yet?”

  “Why bother, Bony. You’re on his tail ... I hope.” Macey’s voice was deep. “Having a nice holiday?”

  “Wonderful, Super, wonderful. Thank you for putting me on the right side of my hostess.”

  “We’ve known her for several years. Tough outside, generous inside. Are you encouraged?”

  “By the job, no. Actually I rang you to say not to bother me if I’m here for a year.”

  “That bad, eh! Well, I know you, my obstinate friend. I’ll cushion you against the thuds from your HQ; that is, as much as I can. Flood passed you yet?”

  “Arrived yesterday. That correct it will be a record?”

  “Near record, anyway. OK. Keep in touch. We’ll keep tag on Lush here, and I’ll let you know if we dig up anything about him before he worked for Mrs Madden.”

  Bony locked the office and replaced the keys where Mac-Curdle kept them, strolled outside the house fence, skirted the vegetable garden and continued beside the levee which now hugged the river bank. Not having been needed for many years, it was weathered and in places reduced by two to three feet from its original height.

  Coming opposite the men’s quarters and cookhouse, he could see up the long reach to the bend on which the mailboxes stood. It was too far to pick them out from the background. He watched the dun-coloured water bearing parts of trees, branches, and small masses of debris, noting how the water boiled when flowing over the concealed bend hole, and how it appeared to be loath to pass by the billabong extending to the house garden and round into the maze of the low land beyond. The river would have to rise another twelve to f
ifteen feet before it would flood into that area.

  Beyond the men’s quarters he found several men working in and about what appeared to be a machinery shed, and, seeing the overseer with them, he crossed to find out what they were doing.

  “You appear to be busy,” he said to the long-faced Vickory.

  “Getting things ready if we have to raise the levee,” replied the overseer. “Haven’t noticed Lush floating down yet.”

  “You still think he fell over the cliff?”

  Vickory nodded. He was going over the treads of a caterpillar tractor, a young man assisting him. “About time Lush came up. Three days, isn’t it?”

  “That is the general guess. No one looking for him now?”

  “No. All hands wanted here. You any good with a scoop?”

  Bony chuckled, saying, “I have been asked if I am good with a shovel. I shall leave the scooping to one more experienced.”

  Two other men under the direction of a third were servicing a bulldozer standing beside a front-end loader, and Bony was aware that this equipment would have been employed in excavating surface dams, and cleaning out dams already sunk. Now it would be ideal for work on the levee.

  Leaving the men, he sauntered farther along the inside of the levee and so to the workshed, beyond which was the shearing-shed. The first was locked. Between the front of the second and the levee several men were squatting or standing about a fireplace. Two he came to recognize as Dead March Harry and Mick the Warder. Coolly, a shade insolently, Bony looked from one to the others, counting eight. To Mick the Warder he said, “The river beat itself by an hour. You and your mate could have been caught.”

  The rotund man grinned and his eyes were calculating. Dead March Harry was sitting on a case and moodily looking into the fire.